In War Thunder a very notable and popular tank the Sherman, is able to turn in place with one track frozen and the other still moving known as a “0 turn”, while the Sherman in real life physically can not do this and actually has a very bad turning radius, this is something that I think is actually very game changing.
This system was already used on tractors at the time so it was a well known system and is a very simple mechanism which is why it was used on the Sherman, in Soviet tests on the Sherman they actually noted this as a downside of the Sherman with it having a 10 meter turning radius.
The Sherman has a steering system called the “Controlled Differential” or “Cletrac Differential”.
The way the Sherman steering works is if you want to turn right and you pull on the right stick it reduces the amount of power sent to the right track so that it spins slower but will never actually stop, but it also increases power to the left track so that the left track spins faster and vis versa, something that is unique only to Controlled Differential steering which the Sherman has.
Below are 2 youtube videos the first showing a simulation of the Controlled or Cletrac steering system.
And the second a detailed video by the National Museum of Military Vehicles in Wyoming on the Sherman tank and near the end they explain the same fact im explaining here.
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isnt this like power steering that NATO tanks get or something
I believe this could be implemented for a lot of the tanks in warthunder, it just hasn’t been
Given the exact phrasing used on this topic, I am almost completely certain that this precise complaint comes from this video (in fact a bit of it is copied word for word).
The video is mostly right, except for at 30:22 where he states that the Cletrac differential in unique in that it speeds up one track when the other slows down. This is called “regenerative steering” and basically any steering system except clutch brake does this.
In fact, out of all regenerative steering systems, it is easy to argue that the Cletrac differential is among the worst, if not the worst, precisely due to the issue of it providing only one fixed turning radius which doesn’t depend on speed, while other regenerative systems allow for the radius to be different depending on the selected gear, meaning larger turning radius at high speeds and tighter radius at low speeds, including potentially neutral turning capabilities.
That said, this is a problem for literally every tank in the game that didn’t use clutch brake steering in real life. It’s not a Sherman only issue. Gaijin simply has not implemented tank steering systems to this level.
Yeah this video inspired me to make this post I tried not to make it word for word though
Ok I did not know it was also a lot of issues for tanks but I think it is a pretty major thing to not have in the game, so hopefully it can be fixed sometime.
sadly every tank in warthunder uses a tracklock steering mechanism, where the brake is applied on the track you want to turn into, i’d really wish it wasn’t like that, especially with tanks with poor acceleration and high weight (cough, Chieftain)
